Here is a jewel by Murray Rothbard, one of the most persuasive of all Libertarian thinkers of any time. The Ethics of Liberty [PDF 7.3M]. This book was freely distributed by the Ludwig von Mises Institute a while back.

Not enough can be said about Murray Rothbard and his contributions to Austrian Economics and Libertarian thinking.

From the Introduction by Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

In an age of intellectual hyperspecialization, Murray N. Rothbard was a grand system builder. An economist by profession, Rothbard was
the creator of a system of social and political philosophy based on economics and ethics as its cornerstones. For centuries, economics and
ethics (political philosophy) had diverged from their common origin into seemingly unrelated intellectual enterprises. Economics was a value-free “positive” science, and ethics (if it was a science at all) was a “normative” science.

As a result of this separation, the concept of property had increasingly disappeared from both disciplines. For economists, property sounded
too normative, and for political philosophers property smacked of mundane economics. Rothbard’s unique contribution is the rediscovery of
property and property rights as the common foundation of both economics and political philosophy, and the systematic reconstruction and conceptual integration of modern, marginalist economics and natural-law political philosophy into a unified moral science: libertarianism.

He is also one of the clearest thinkers and writers I have ever read. This book is a must read for anyone with the call to liberty in their bones.

Also from the intro:

When The Ethics of Liberty appeared in 1982, it initially attracted only a little attention in academia. Two factors were responsible for this
neglect. First, there were the anarchistic implications of Rothbard’s theory, and his argument that the institution of government-the state-is
incompatible with the fundamental principles of justice. As defined by Rothbard, a state is an organization “which possesses either or both (in actual fact, almost always both) of the following characteristics: (a) it acquires its revenue by physical coercion (taxation); and (b) it achieves a compulsory monopoly of force and of ultimate decision-making power over a given territorial area. Both of these essential activities of the
State necessarily constitute criminal aggression and depredation of the just rights of private property of its subjects (including
self-ownership). For the first constitutes and establishes theft on a grand scale; while the second prohibits the free competition
of defense and decision-making agencies within a given territorial area-prohibiting the voluntary purchase and sale
of defense and judicial services (p. 172-73).

“Without justice,” Rothbard concluded as St. Augustine had before him, “the state was nothing but a band of robbers.”

What was the second reason?

Rothbard, as every reader of the following treatise will quickly recognize, was the prototype of a “coercive philosopher” (in the startling Nozickian definition of coercion). He demanded and presented proofs and exact and complete answers rather then tentative explanations, conjectum, and open questions. Regarding Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick had written that “some may feel that the truth about ethics and political philosophy is too serious and important to be obtained by such ‘flashy’ tools.”

T his was certainly Rothbard’s conviction. Because man cannot not act as long as he is alive, and he must use scarce means to do so, he must also permanently choose between right and wrong conduct. The fundamental question of ethics-what am I here and now rightfully allowed to do and what not is thus the most permanent, important, and pressing intellectual concern confronting man. Whenever and wherever one acts, an actor must be able to determine and distinguish unambiguously and instantly right from wrong. Thus, any ethic worth its salt must-praxeologically-be a “coercive” one, because only proofs and knockdown arguments can provide such definite answers as are necessary. Man cannot temporarily suspend acting; hence, tentative conjectures and open questions simply are not up to the task of a human ethic.

Rothbard’s “coercive” philosophizing-his insistence that ethics must be an axiomatic-deductive system, an ethic more geometrico-was nothing
new or unusual, of course. As already noted, Rothbard shared this view concerning the nature of ethics with the entire tradition of rationalist
philosophy. His had been the dominant view of Christian rationalism and of the Enlightenment. Nor did Rothbard claim infallibility regarding
his ethics. In accordance with the tradition of rationalist philosophy he merely insisted that axiomatic-deductive arguments can be attacked, and
possibly refuted, exclusively by other arguments of the same logical status (just as one would insist, without thereby claiming infallibility for
logicians and mathematicians, that logical or mathematical proofs can be attacked only by other logical or mathematical arguments).

He was a big meanie, apparently. Meanie in this day and age is what used to be known as “clear, solid, rational, deductive”, etc.

December 3rd, 2005 | Economics, Liberty, Politics

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